Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday March 09, 2012 @08:10AM
from the less-power-to-the-people dept.

mdsolar sends this quote from an article at the NY Times:
"All but two of Japan's 54 commercial reactors have gone offline since the nuclear disaster a year ago, after the earthquake and tsunami, and it is not clear when they can be restarted. With the last operating reactor scheduled to be idled as soon as next month, Japan — once one of the world's leaders in atomic energy — will have at least temporarily shut down an industry that once generated a third of its electricity. With few alternatives, the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, has called for restarting the plants as soon as possible, saying he supports a gradual phase-out of nuclear power over several decades. Yet, fearing public opposition, he has said he will not restart the reactors without the approval of local community leaders."

I guess with 1/3rd of their power offline, they could mandate energy rations to everyone. If they get tired of that system they can, as a community, opt to re-instate their reactors and make a long term plan to switch to some other non-petroleum source for power. They have brilliant scientists, I'm sure they can figure this out. Greed seems like less of a hindrance there than here in the USA.

The Japanese have been very successful in curbing demand. I was over in Japan for a week on a business trip last year, and it was interesting to see how they did it. This included absolutely all hand-driers in toilets being switched off, less air-conditioning (room temperature was set for 28C in the office), the business week of large corporations shifted to reduce peak-week-time demand and increase that on the weekend, and a move to more relaxed corporate dress-code - which included in many cases, a small towel attached to the waistband with which to mop off the sweat form the oppressive environment. There were no doubt more measures that I wasn't aware of, but life definitely carries on as normal without power cuts.

Yet if you look at they graphic in the article it looks like they've only managed to reduce demand by about 10%. Not a huge reduction when you take into account the changes in living standards. Just goes to show that conservation will only go so far and it's all the things in the background that a required on a day to day basis that is the big hitters.

I live in Japan. Life here isn't like it is in the west. Before the tsunami the air conditioner in the office was set to 26 degrees C. After it was set to 28 decrees C. In the winter, the heater was set to 15 degrees C before the tsunami and 14 degrees C after. Even then, because it was a cold winter where I am, they ended up pushing up the thermostat to 15 degrees anyway.

BTW, I work in a school and the class rooms are unheated/uncooled just like always.

Conservation works reasonably well. The problem was that the Japanese were already conserving.

less air-conditioning (room temperature was set for 28C in the office),

Which, in my case, would reduce work productivity to such a significant degree that saving the money for air conditioning just wouldn't be efficient at all. I'd rather work in the evening at home if I had to do that.

I lived in northern Japan last year during the summer. The Japanese voluntarily cut back their electricity use so much that they didn't need to impose energy rationing. I don't know if that has changed since I left.

Danish television had a reportage on the effect of the Fukushima incident on the people living nearby.

After seeing the reportage, I can understand why they are shutting down the other reactors for the time being. It's one thing reading that nuclear power plants statistically kills very few compared to other sources of energy, it's another thing when you have to leave your ancestors home for 12 generations, or be stuck with a house that nobody will buy because even if it's outside the immediate danger zone and the authorities say it's safe, noone wants to take the risk.

Whether fair or not, the incident violated the trust people had in the administrators of the nuclear tech, and it's going to take something to earn that trust back.

It doesn't really matter why they're kept out of their homes; the fact that people are too scared to live in or buy homes in an area is still a real estate crisis, and, as we've seen in the U.S., real estate loss can be a quick way to lose everything. Sometimes facts aren't enough to stem fear, at least not right away.

GP already addressed this point well in his post. It isn't fair to the nuclear power industry as a whole, but Fukushima shook the trust of the populace badly. Their fear is not unreasonable, especially in light of all the mistakes that were later uncovered (and, of course, widespread fear gives rise to "stupid regulations").

Think of it this way: If you survive the very, very unlikely incident of a plane crash, would it be unreasonable if you started to fear flying, regardless of the overall safety statistics? Sure, you may be one of the many folks that flies again with no problem, but it would also be understandable if you decided to drive everywhere, instead. The psychology behind this type of fear makes clear sense.

And what are Japan, Germany, etc. going to do for energy once they've phased out their big, scary nuclear power plants? Unless they find a way to quickly and effectively implement large-scale solar plants/farms, geothermal, etc. they're going to resort to burning fossil fuel. A big step backwards because, under extreme circumstances, nuclear can be dangerous.

You know what's even more dangerous than an accident at a nuclear plant? A world-wide war over the planet's dwindling fossil fuel supplies.

Japan was already the #2 nation in the world at burning oil for power; Saudi Arabia was #1, no surprise. #3? Good ol' USA - courtesy Hawaii. Japan is the #3 oil consumer in the world; Japan - Analysis - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) [eia.gov]. The estimate is for them to increase oil consumption ca. 238k barrels per day to make up for the shortfall from offline nukes; oil only provides 10% of their generating capacity. This will add a few % points to the overall price of crude but Iran sanctions and growing demand from developing countries will be larger factors.

Japan also shed 423 kb/d in 2009, due to the recession, so they're simply backtracking to earlier consumption levels.

I'm not worried about Germany. Already in 2011 clean energies (wind/solar/biomass/hydro) surpassed nuclear in production 108TWh nuclear vs 117TWh. This out of a grand total of 612TWh. Most of the electricity comes from coal.

There are large programs under way to expand on that. The biggest challenge are the transmission lines who do not have the capacity to ferry large amounts of electricity from the new production areas (north) to where electricity is used and can be stored in hydro plants (south).

Lumping hydro in here with the rest of them is not good for coherent analysis. Hydro is definitely viable on large scales; the only problem is that it's already mostly at capacity in Europe, because it was historically one of the first efficient ways to generate electricity. So when you count it as green, it completely dwarfs all other tech (solar/wind/biomass) on one hand, making green look big - but, at the same time, it won't grow in the future. Wind/solar, on the other hand, have capacity for growth, but even if they grow tenfold, the overall "green with hydro" will not change by much.

Most of their citizens will probably move to China to follow all the jobs that leave due to all the companies leaving for countries that can meet their power demand. After everyone has left, the existing fossil fuel generation plants will easily be able to provide electricity for the remaining population! Problem solved!

As for Germany, speaking as someone coming from a neighbour country, it seems they're really into getting more renewable energy sources up and running. If you were really interested in this, as opposed to just complaining, you could check out the Wikipedia page on renewable energy in Germany [wikipedia.org].

To be honest, I think the tech is there, it's just a question of dumping some money into it, and the increasing oil prices are helping with that. The Danish engineering society had a plan for Denmark to get rid of (I think?) 90+% of the current dependence on fossil fuels in 2050. We have no nuclear power plants.

You could also check out some of the spiegel.de articles over the last two months. In which they showed that the only reason that renewable energy is profitable is due to massive government subsidies(covering around 80% of the costs), which the government is now cutting. Germany is going to have a very massive power problem very soon. Either power is going to hit 0.30kwh or more soon, or they're going to be restarting those nuke plants as opposed to buying all their extra power from France.

High horse Norwegian, here. I'd like to point out that Norway's electricity is already 100% renewable. Right now. 100%. So much for "waah waah it can't be done." Incidentally, I pay about the equivalent of USD 0.04 per kilowatt hour in Oppland. Probably less than half what you pay. Deal with it.

You need to go and update the wiki page that claims Norway gets 42% from Fossil fuels.

Japan has a huge coast line, it's an ideal location for wind parks. Germany is investing heavily into that, but that means (among other things) to build HVDC transmission lines to reach the coast. Japan doesn't even need to do that. For reference, here is a report from the Royal Corps of Engineering about the costs of various power sources: Costs_Report [countryguardian.net]. Wind is actually quite affordable despite the standby costs (taken into consideration by the report). Electric cars and demand shaping (e.g. with smart metering) could help bringing that down further.

Extreme circumstances are normal in the pacific ring of fire, and just like Germany, Japan has no place to store the spent nuclear fuel. Neither country can afford to lose a chunk of land like the region around Fukushima - they are densely populated and the land is highly developed and valuable.

That doesn't mean that nuclear power doesn't make sense anywhere, but Japan is the wrong place for it.

Germany is getting gas from Russia, preferentially. During the cold-spell in february, Gazprom reduced gas deliveries to Germany for exactly one day, quite unlike deliveries to all the Eastern European countries that were much harder hit. Who cares about people freezing to dead, so long as it's not in Germany? Oh, of course, Germans refuse to get their own gas from fracking. Based on (justified) fears about the chemicals being used, they (unjustifiably) banned the whole industry, instead of merely banning t

You know what's even more dangerous than an accident at a nuclear plant? A world-wide war over the planet's dwindling fossil fuel supplies.

Those supplies will run out eventually of course, but we're nowhere near running out right now. "Eventually" is a long way away. New discoveries are being made all the time, and the world's coal supply... even if demand is ramped up... has enough for centuries of use. The US alone has one quarter of the Earth's coal reserves, and after hundreds of years of industrial use, we've barely dented it. Prices will definitely rise as demand rises, but supply won't be exhausted. There will be no "world-wide war" ove

I agree, but one thing to keep in mind is public perception. A lot of these people are now scared shitless, and that's a difficult tide to go up against. Most policy-makers wouldn't have the backbone for it. I don't know what the right answer should be. It seems many of the people in charge don't either, so they're doing a classic fall-back maneuver. It sucks ass that the place to fall back to is coal, but I see why they feel they have to, until/unless a leader with some brass stands up.

Apples?? I dunno.. their pulp looks too bland to be useful.
Sounds to me like the juice from Japanese Cherries [wikipedia.org] contains more anthocyanins to put into your el-cheapo Grätzel solar cell [wikipedia.org].
(Are Anthocyanins actually any good for that? Could you use blueberry juice instead?)

France relies heavily on shitty heating equipment, France's homes are, generally, pretty shittily insulated against the elements (they lost more to a warm month than we have in Iraq and Afghanistan), and Germany fired up coal plants to meet demand.

My dad was saying that Tokyo is depressing, apparently there are power shortages so most of the signs and escalators are turned off and the city is dark. How are they supposed to make up their energy requirements if they stop using nuclear?

That is not really true. There was a period of (planned) rolling blackouts, but in the end energy conservation (and increased generation) meant that, except for immediately after the quake, the lights didn't go off.

However, many buildings (and stations) reduced lighting and took some escalators out of service. However, even those measures have mostly been abandoned, with escalators and the like operating as before (partly due to the fact that it wasn't practical to block off escalators in many of the busier stations). Many stores and offices, however, continue to turn off some of their lights.

That said, even at "reduced" lighting, most Japanese stations are still incredibly well lit. We aren't talking about platforms half shrouded in shadow so much as a slight reduction in the overall brightness level.

It will be interesting to see, however, what happens as we once again approach summer (and the increased energy demands due to A/C) combined with the current shut-down of nuclear power plants.

This hasn't been the case for months. I was in Tokyo a few years back and again in september 2011, a few months after Fukushima. The difference was negligible. Signs and escalators were on as usual. There were no rolling blackouts. They had just switched back the airport express trains to the regular schedule too after running them on reduced traffic for a while. I did a fair bit of travelling around central and western Japan and there were no signs of power shortages anywhere (granted I didn't go anywhere very near to Fukushima). The only thing that reminded me that there had been any kind of nuclear power-related incident was that I found one grocery advertising guaranteed radiation-free food.

I strongly believe the scale and impact of the Fukushima incident was vastly exaggerated by western media for the sake of sensationalism. The consequences for those living nearby were severe. For everyone else life returned to normal after a few months.

... but probably not much more than some of the more +1 Insightful commenters here.

The core of their problem is arrogance and the influence business has over government regulators. The days of shoguns and daimyos are long behind Japan but somehow the mindset still lives on. There are a few very large companies in Japan with a rich and tight lineage that dates back to before the Meiji restoration. Their influence over government and their "job-for-life" filial piety along with their reluctance to challenge the people "in charge" of things has led to a poorly regulated nuclear industry which allowed the Fukushima disaster to occur.

But Japan is not "unique" in this. It just so happens that they were the first to get tripped up with a natural disaster. But that said, they did a lot of things in the handling that simply made it worse and worse. (Still, they came in 2nd when you compare Fukushima to the BP oil spill and BP's handling of that.) In the US, the nuclear industry and been playing a pushing game where the NRC pushes the nuclear energy companies and the nuclear energy companies push back through various means not the least of which are lobbying and other forms of politics. One difference between the US and Japan is found in the success of independent watchdog groups who take personal interest in the environment and the safety of nuclear energy. Greenpeace is a huge annoyance, but they also serve an important purpose in that they can and do bring light to problems that would otherwise be swept under the rug. This exists less in Japan and problems that some people have knowledge of are often unheard and cannot speak. Their lack of openness is a critical problem.

My initial reaction to this turn is that Japan is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. They are an emotional and over-reaction group of people. But the US made them that way.... the US did it to Germany as well. When we 'pacified' them over the decades, we shifted their thinking and their sense of reason. So instead of saying "okay, here are the causes of the problem, let's fix them!" they are more concerned about who is to blame and are focusing on the fact that nuclear energy is an awesome and powerful source of energy which is also very dangerous. Well, yes... yes it is. But they forget that it's also controllable and containable with vigilant regulation and oversight.

Vigilance of regulation and oversight are expensive... and annoying... and definitely slow things down and make things cost more. But without it...?

One difference between the US and Japan is found in the success of independent watchdog groups who take personal interest in the environment and the safety of nuclear energy.

Too bad they are totally fucking pointless. Not only do we have reactors of the same exact type as what went kablooey at Fukushima Daiichi, but we also have reactors which are copies of it. And we have even more spent fuel lying around in pools waiting to be redistributed across our landscape.

My initial reaction to this turn is that Japan is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. They are an emotional and over-reaction group of people. But the US made them that way...

...When GE decided that Fukushima Daiichi #1 should be built on ground known to be unsafe, in spite of there being other, superior locations available, and when the US government forced the Japanese government to put t

...When GE decided that Fukushima Daiichi #1 should be built on ground known to be unsafe

Two things to note here. First, the ground turned out to be safe. Fukushima weathered the earthquake just fine. The tsunami didn't have anything to do with the ground itself. Second, GE didn't make the decision on where to put the nuclear reactors. It just built them.

Regulation and oversight did nothing to prevent the wholly preventable disaster at Fukushima Daiichi. In fact, they created the situation.

I've read the reports and no, regulation and oversight didn't have that effect.

The simple truth is that humans are not mature enough to handle the awesome responsibility of nuclear power.

There we go. That's what all this logic fail was leading to. My take is that you demonstrate via your errorenous and unsupported arguments that you aren't responsib

That's not how it works. Responsibility is just this thing that you have or you don't. You can prove responsibility for one thing by demonstrating responsibility for some other thing. And we have not demonstrated sufficient responsibility for lesser things, really. Oil drilling? No. Coal mining? Not really. Natural gas? Frack no. Out atmosphere? Shitting it up. Water? Shitting it up.

There's a simple solution to this particular responsibility problem. We shouldn't let you near a position of responsibility.

You have no basis for your claims on these particular issues. Keep in mind that you are making the claim of irresponsibility on the result of a single nuclear accident (of little consequence, I might add). It's also worth noting that you don't have a case for any of these other technologies being used irresponsibly by society either.

That's a lot of shit, and you should know that. In the absence of existing maturity, you don't hand a child a gun. That's not how you build the maturity necessary to handle a gun. You build maturity with something lesser, like maybe a one-pump BB gun, and work your way up.

They are an emotional and over-reaction group of people. But the US made them that way.... the US did it to Germany as well. When we 'pacified' them over the decades, we shifted their thinking and their sense of reason. So instead of saying "okay, here are the causes of the problem, let's fix them!" they are more concerned about who is to blame and are focusing on the fact that nuclear energy is an awesome and powerful source of energy which is also very dangerous. Well, yes... yes it is. But they forget that it's also controllable and containable with vigilant regulation and oversight.

Vigilance of regulation and oversight are expensive... and annoying... and definitely slow things down and make things cost more. But without it...?

Not commenting on how reeking of paternalism and colonialism this is, you are just here contradicting what you asserted at the beginning of your post, that the cause of this is corporations dictating their own regulations to the government, except that you then try to localize the problem by linking it to Shoguns and Daimios and cultural traits.

From TFA:

“March 11 has shaken Japan to the root of its postwar identity,” said Takeo Kikkawa, an economist who specializes in energy issues at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. “We were the country that suffered Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but then we showed we had the superior technology and technocratic expertise to safely tame this awesome power for peaceful economic progress. Nuclear accidents were things that happened in other countries.”

Is that what you call an emotional statement? From TFA again:

In many respects, Japan is already on the road to recovery from the huge earthquake and tsunami, which killed as many as 19,000 people, and to a lesser degree from the nuclear accident. The northeastern coastal towns that were flattened by the waves have cleaned up millions of tons of debris and are beginning to rebuild.But it is the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi that looks likely to have a more lasting impact, even though it has yet to claim a single life. Japan is just beginning what promises to be a radiation cleanup that will last decades of the evacuated areas around the plant, where nearly 90,000 residents lost their homes. The nation is also groping to find effective ways to monitor health and protect its food supply from contamination by the accident.

...From TFA still:

Japan has so far succeeded in avoiding shortages, thanks in part to a drastic conservation program that has involved turning off air-conditioning in the summer and office lights during the day.

With a third of their electricity cut off, they manage! That is remarkable and unexpected. The Japanese are showing great courage in keeping shut plants that cannot demonstrate that they are safe. The Japanese population is disciplined enough to follow drastic measures to save electricity, and it is working!

Ah the possibilities of starting a pro-/anti-nuke, liberal vs tighter regulations and many more...
But let's stay nice today and just state a few simple facts:

Nuclear is about as dangerous as possible, if not properly built, maintained and inspected by an independent(!) group

The benefits of having nuclear power are big and the risk of something going wrong is rather low, but

If the shit hits the fan, it does so big time.

There are newer and safer designs available, but most reactors in the wild are older versions

Nuclear isn't actually that cheap if factoring in ALL external costs. (Waste storage for a few thousand years, insurance that would completely cover the costs in case of meltdown, etc.)

Other energy sources have other drawbacks (pollution, price, radioactive fallout-yes I'm looking at you coal-, having to hand over money to dictators and many more)

My opinion on this? Nuclear is fine because it produces a lot of energy with a comparatively low environmental impact. It is quickly adjustable to current needs and is independent of wind or weather. But if there ever was one industry that needs tight oversight and jail time for any manager that fucks up security it is nuclear. The oil spill was bad, but it is over. Though it will take many years for the ocean to regenerate it will. But if a reactor blows up for good, the damage stays with you for several hundred years. So you have to make damn sure it never happens.

And the big problem is that safety assessment of nuclear power plants relies on an assumption that operators and the government oversight are competent, there is no (and will be no) corruption and no sabotage.

That's bullshit right there.

Nuclear power creates significant financial risk and for high population density countries like Germany and Japan it does not make financial sense to use it (as long as alternatives are available).

They are an emotional and over-reaction group of people. But the US made them that way.... the US did it to Germany as well. When we 'pacified' them over the decades, we shifted their thinking and their sense of reason. So instead of saying "okay, here are the causes of the problem, let's fix them!" they are more concerned about who is to blame and are focusing on the fact that nuclear energy is an awesome and powerful source of energy which is also very dangerous.

Because we didn't let them have an army, they lost the ability to make decisions and solve problems? Seriously?

Yep. We had to destroy their arguments for logically invading other countries. By forcing them to emphasize that people in other countries are people too, we added an emotional element that destroyed their logical psyche.

Go back in time 30 years and say that, and we MIGHT have one or two newer plants today.

The fact that a new nuclear plant is orders of magnitude safer than any old design doesn't matter. This is an EMOTIONAL issue. Nuclear = bad! All nuclear plants are the same as the worst nuclear plants! Rabble rabble!

I love that Japan decided to move over 1/3 of their energy production away from the safest, most cost-efficient form of heat-power generation, and revert to something colossally terrible for the environment, with really no plan to do so in place. Clearly the best possible outcome, with the best results for everyone involved./s

I love that Japan decided to move over 1/3 of their energy production away from the safest, most cost-efficient form of heat-power generation, and revert to something colossally terrible for the environment, with really no plan to do so in place. Clearly the best possible outcome, with the best results for everyone involved./s

What does "corporate America" have to do with the Japanese decision on their reactors? And since when is nuclear cost-efficient? One of the reasons it's so hard to get nuclear plants built in the US is the massive costs involved in building them.

From what I read in the western media, TEPCO is losing incredible amounts of money cleaning up the Fukushima mess.
The Japanese also seem less than happy ("Private panel blames TEPCO's 'systematic negligence'") [asahi.com] [note to Slashdot readers: that Asahi Shimbun newspaper doesn't seem to have a paywall].

However, I also read that TEPCO was strongly involved in developing Sodium-Sulfur batteries [wikipedia.org] to help solve the storage problem associated with large rollout of intermittent electricity generators (i.e. solar only when it's sunny and wind turbines only when it's windy). Anything else than Sodium-Sulfur or other cheap redox couples, is probably too expensive for real large-scale use.

So, I really hope that the battery division of TEPCO survives any lawsuits/bankruptcy procedures/government sanctions because they seem to be working on transitioning Japan away from the nuclear addiction and towards a very clean (but slightly explosive) technology that the rest of the world is probably eager to share.
Anybody in Japan please comment if this makes sense. I don't read Japanese and have never been there.

It's O.K, it's just another pathetic anti-nuclear article submitted by mdsolar, a known kook and scaremonger. It's unlikely the NYTime article says anything remotely like mdsolars summary implies. In fact, just assume the complete opposite of anything mdsolar has written in the summary.

And when (if) fusion becomes commercially viable what then? Japan was leading the world in fusion research and it was expected that they'd crack the break-even point first. I'd hate to see such an important development set back because a poorly maintained fusion reactor that was past its decommision date couldn't survive a simultaneous earthquake and tsunami...

I didn't think that the reactors at Fukushima were poorly maintained. The disaster planning/design however did not address both an earthquake and a tsunami of that size. Now they should have anticipated both as the plant was located along a shoreline, but that's a different matter. When the earthquake hit, the reactors shut down immediately and the emergency diesel generators kicked in to provide power and cooling according to plan. But these generators were located either on the ground floor or basements. The sea wall around the plant would protect it against it a 25 ft wave. The problem was the wave was at least 40 ft. The diesel generators were wiped out and the plant lost all power. Disaster planning did not address this scenario and operators had to improvise. I would also say that the company TEPCO as a whole was slow to react and not forthcoming about the reality of the situation.

It's a shame, really. I'd love to see Japan eventually replacing the old reactors with the newer, safer ones. Especially in the more stable areas. I realize there's still a lot of hysteria in that area, still, but reason and logic could quell their fear. I think most people at with at least a modicum understanding of tech-- and most that I know, I've gathered from this site and the links provided-- realize the benefits newer reactors offer over the old.

It's already significantly affected Japan. For the first time since 1980, Japan has a negative balance of trade. This is from the Trading Economics [tradingeconomics.com] site page on Japan.

Last year Japan’s trade balance fell into an annual deficit for the first time since 1980, driven by subdued global demand and soaring fossil fuel imports in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear power crisis.

I fully understand their desire to decrease dependence on nuclear power in light of the disaster, but quitting "cold turkey" obviously has had a strong negative impact.

I think more likely it will be "hot" turkey this summer. Peak demand is A/C summer use, and with more plants offline this summer, it will be interesting. In the end, will being uncomfortably hot trump fear of nuke's? In the US, I know people would be screaming to turn them back on again so they can turn on their A/C.

Probably not....Japanese people are much more willing to put up with personal discomfort for the sake of the collective. A big part of their culture revolves around keeping harmony with the people around them, so speaking up with a complaint is unbecoming. Also having an idea that differs from other peoples' is frowned upon.
This summer will probably turn out to be the same as last summer, with the rolling blackouts making a comeback. Although since more power plants have been shut down, the radius of blackouts might be extended. I don't know what my company will do during the blackouts if they come to our area, since we develop software and obviously can't do that with no power;P.

Yes, I can imagine imagine a world not handicapped by the need for fossil fuels, but that's not going to happen in my life unless there are some truly astounding breakthroughs in alternative energy. The earth's population is increasing too rapidly for that. The global population may be as high as 10.5 billion by 2050 and the global energy demand will be proportionally higher. Although the use of alternative energy sources will increase, so will the use of conventional sources. The mix between oil, natur

> In contrast, Germany has worked hard to make heatings and houses fit for the 21st century.

Yep: we are coming up to 10 years in our PassivHaus in central Germany: not only is there little need for active heating, but it is incredibly comfortable to live in: draught / sound proofing, no hot/cold spots,...

Typically anonymous and cowardly comment. Business decided where to put the reactor, in a location they knew were unsafe, and government forced that decision through. So while business didn't create the tsunami, they deliberately created the situation in which a tsunami would cause a meltdown, and did so with government oversight.

Typically anonymous and cowardly comment. Business decided where to put the reactor, in a location they knew were unsafe, and government forced that decision through. So while business didn't create the tsunami, they deliberately created the situation in which a tsunami would cause a meltdown, and did so with government oversight.

Business doesn't decide anything in Japan. Japan has one of the most rigid centralized governments anywhere in the world. If you want to move a local street sign, you have to get permission from Tokyo. The government decides everything over there. I don't want to call Japan fascist... since they do have free elections there... but the Japanese government certainly does pick winners and losers in their corporate field in the way that classic fascist governments did, and the corporations in Japan take their marching orders from Tokyo. This is by design, and it's been the model since post WWII. This model is supposedly why Japan was going to rule the world via business (instead of by military force) by the mid-90's. Several books in the 80's touted the superiority of this model to the American market system, declaring the US system obsolete. It didn't quite work out that way. Japan is now in its' third decade of economic doldrums, yet the government clings to this top-down model. One of the things that Japanese companies found when they started building factories and plants in the US and abroad was that they had much more freedom to operate locally than back at home.

You seem to think that businesses tell the government what to do over there. Quite the opposite. The government bureaucracy completely rules that country. If the reactors were built in a bad place, then Tokyo was just fine with that.

Actually, this is one of the rare cases where business is the force for "good", while public opinion is the force for "evil".

If public didn't hear associate "radiation" with "oh god, a HORRIBLE DEATH GLOWING GREEN!", reactor subsystems would have been upgraded to more modern ones quite a while ago. But they can't be upgraded, because "upgrades to nuclear power plants peripherals" will be spun as "upgrading nuclear power plants" which will be heard as "we are building more nuclear power, HORRIBLE DEATH GLOWING GREEN!".

So we end up having tech from 60s (when entire industry was born in 50s!) instead of modern reactors and modern peripherals that would have taken the punishment of that tsunami. Hell, we can't even research new tech because of public opinion, and are forced to use old tech. Fukushima was a great demonstration of how well plants were actually made - many forget that plants were built to withstand 7 magnitudes and reasonable tsunamis, and got hit by 9 magnitudes and biggest tsunami in a century and then some. And even so, the plant didn't cause a single death, even with tsunami wiping out essentially all infrastructure of the region and killing 30.000 people.

We really should make a name for "stupid, loud and opinionated people" as a concept. "Sheepism" maybe?

Is that true, or is it another fallacious argument aiming at representing nuclear industry as the poor, benevolent guy trying his best to go good but being thwarted by crazy, enraged, hateful, irrational, almighty hippies, luddites and joe-six-packs? Honest question here. I have a hard time figuring out how a bunch of idealist activists did prevent the development of safer nuclear reactor designs and, if they were so powerful as to be able to do that, how were people demonstrating in the streets by the thousands all over the world incapable of preventing the Iraq invasion for instance? This just doesn't cut it.

My feeling is that there is at least as much lies, blindness and dishonesty on the proponent side of NP than on the opposing side. In any case the condescending, contemptuous attitude towards NP skeptics that is so common here on slashdot in particular makes me strongly think that the issues at hand are definitely not as simple and clear-cut as the nuclear fanatics would like to make it appear.

Technical reasons decided where to put the reactor. Like all nuclear power plants, Fukushima needed a massive body of water to assist in cooling the plant. Japan isn't known for its huge rivers or lakes, so the coast becomes the default location to place power plants.

"Summary [of talk] Robert Whiting has written a number of books on Japan, including You Gotta Have Wa, The Meaning of Ichiro and Tokyo Underworld, which is being developed as a series for HBO. In this lecture, Whiting addresses the intractable role of yakuza in virtually all areas of modern day society in Japan. He discusses the sequel to Tokyo Underworld that he is writing, shares insights into the genesis of the HBO project and